


In the Dark of the Night

by wanderlustlover



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4295010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The job gets to them. They wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dark of the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alemara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/gifts).



The job gets to them. They wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.

If it didn’t, they’d become everything it is they fight again. Everything they slide toward, and stop short from, and fight against even harder, in the world and in themselves. The world isn’t all roses and sunshine. The world has it, but the world, also, has a lot of ugly and evil in it, and Gotham, when they were handing out portions of it, took a buffet sized helping.

The job never ends and days off are rare. Rarer still in these few rooms. But nights come to an end regardless, and sleep happens, even on those nights when it’s closer to morning than night. The only vague lie being that it’s still dark when her eyes close, minutes and hours of it left sliding through her mind as a calculation and a countdown clock.

It’d be a lie if she said it’s not a relief to put everything down. Even for a few minutes in the dark. Before dawn will come calling, needing her to keep on top of everything from yesterday while giving her a new lapful for tomorrow’s new today, too. But night captures her as true as any other net. Heavy and liquid, drowning out every thought into a rolling blackness.

Until the bed shifts.

It’s only that her chair is two feet away that her hands don’t go for her eskrima sticks before her eyes are even open. That they are that far away, and her pillow is under her cheek, means she’s somewhere she considered safe before falling asleep. Makes her looks over her shoulder even if she can’t relax that quickly.

She knows his shape even in the pitch dark. She knows all of them.

But only one of them would be crawling into her bed right before dawn.

He’s fast in the dark, while she’s still blinking. Turning herself the right way, having to remember there are parts of her that actually are the lead weights her exhausted, still half asleep, mind is emulating. Find a still-costumed shoulder and then a cheek, unsurprised that he’s kissing her without a single word, before she’s even fully awake.

There are a lot of different ways they’ve kissed in the time she’s known him. She could paint those in the darkness, without a single word. They are their own language, and she knows this one from the moment his mouth touches hers. A little desperate, a little sad, a little demanding, fingers sliding behind her ear and into hair, like there’s not enough of her to hold on to, and he need to know.

She knows this kiss. She knows the way his forehead leans into hers. She knows his eyes are closed, and every muscle in his body is still shivering from too much tension. She knows the heavy breath, that has nothing to do with the kiss, that follows. Knows the way he still smells like blood and sweat. The hot night air, relentless as the darkness itself, mixed with his breath, and blurring to her half-closed eyes, bringing itself with him.

“Sleep,” she murmurs, hand sliding around the side of his head, as she pulls his head toward her shoulder, understanding. The night is dark, but the bed is warm, and sometimes, especially in Gotham, especially in the ugliness the world is capable of, you need something more at the end of the fight and the end of the night to remind you.


End file.
